A project by Dafni Pantazopoulou

Athens-London 2021

The project Imperi(a)l marbles – Imperi(a)l narrative is a proposal for a simultaneous performance in the Room 18 of the British Museum (London), in the 3rd floor of the Acropolis Museum (Athens) and a digital one.

For one month, every day from 12:00 PM to 14:00 AM in both museums and online on this website, spectators can experience a new narrative that subverts notions of dominance, memory, visibility, impossibility, and heritage. In this project, I am proposing and re-imagining a performance in the form of a diverse re-enactment of the Panathenaic procession.

Imperial narratives of each museum and others:

From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the sculptures of the Acropolis, now known as the Elgin Marbles, with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire.

The protagonists of the Imperi(a)l marbles – Imperi(a)l narrative:

How can we give voice to the anonymous masons, builders, slaves, craftsmen, moulders and all the nameless ‘heroes’ that are missing from the narrative of the construction of the Parthenon? A narrative that always commemorates the two famous architects (Ictinus and Callicrates), the famous sculptor (Phidias) but it is the same narrative that dismisses and is forgetful of the actual ‘hands’ that put their labor and sweat for the construction of the Parthenon. For the purpose of the project, I am proposing a re-enactment of the procession based on the depicted figures of the marble reliefs from the Frieze relocated and displayed in both the Museums (the British and the Acropolis) but with diverse protagonists. The performers in both museums will not echo back to the young Athenians and aristocrats of the ancient times, but they will be a combination of the nowadays under-represented voices; the performers selection intends to pay tribute to the subaltern element, the lost ‘heroes’ mentioned above but also to highlight aspects of visibility. For this reason, the 40 performers on each site (British and Acropolis Museums) will comment on the contemporary ‘slaves’; all nonprofessional performers originate from the under-represented identities in each city. Immigrants, refugees, prisoners, people with disabilities, black and Asian; each body carries a heritage and a historicity. The multiple contemporary identities will mingle with the builders’/slaves’/craftsmen of the ancient times to shape a new narrative of and for the nameless.

Imagining the performances:

The marble reliefs of the procession are displayed very differently in each Museum as you can see below, consequently the two live performances will be different. In the B.M. the performers will be facing each other since the reliefs are on the walls, where in the A.M. the performers will be surrounding the block that carries the reliefs.

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The performers in the British Museum will be standing each one in front of each relief:

And the performers in the Acropolis Museum will be standing only in front of the original marble reliefs and not in front of the plaster copies:

Taking a closer look in both example-pictures above (behind the performers which I have placed as a demonstration of their positions in the performance) you can observe that I have selected from both museums the exact same part from the north side of the frieze; the scene with the horsemen. The viewer realizes that in the first picture (B.M.) the performers are standing each one in front of each marble relief of horsemen and in the second picture the performers in the Acropolis Museum are standing only in front of the three original reliefs with horsemen. The rest are left blank without any performers because their originals are in the British Museum. Therefore, both performances are fragmented and ‘incomplete’. They display what is there to be displayed and imagine the procession based on the existence of the ‘original’ marbles.

Imperi(a)l marbles – Imperi(a)l narrative also intends to draw attention to the notion of the fragmentation under which both museums are displaying their objects. In the British Museum the marble reliefs of the frieze are displayed in a fabricated row as if there are not any reliefs ‘missing’ in between. And in the Acropolis Museum the reconstruction of the frieze displays both the authentic marble reliefs and in between the ‘missing ones’ (the ones in the British Museum) with copies by white plaster. All the objects are dislocated from their original monument-‘birth-place’ and are subject to the processes of historicization and museumization.

During each performance on each museum, the performers will be allocated and filmed in their specified places. (The filming material from both museums will create the mosaic for the digital performance; explanation below).

Combining the two simultaneous performances into the digital one:

The above plan shows the exploded view of the frieze and the way it is reconstructed only in the Acropolis Museum. The reliefs indicated with red are copies and the originals are displayed in the British Museum. The digital performance will combine the filmic material of the red parts (performers in the British Museum) with the material of the black parts (the performers in the Acropolis Museum) to create a mosaic of the reunited ‘processions’ and narratives into one digital and imaginary entity.

Below you can see a static example of how the two filmic materials will be combined into the digital performance:

The digital performance Imperi(a)l marbles – Imperi(a)l narrative is the desired final project; a comment to the impossibility of the pre-inscribed cultural heritage. The digital performance will unite the fragmented pieces and performances from each museum and offer a new interpretation to the narrative of the Panathenaic procession with a commentary on the lost voices that are missing from the dominant history both of the past and today. The digital performance will be the representation of the under-represented.

Requirements for the project:

“The debate about whether dance history is, or should be, a discrete discipline has
been well rehearsed as part of the wider postmodern debate about the nature
of knowledge and disciplinary boundaries” (Adshead-Lansdale: 1997).

Drawing on a number of essays, in this post I intend to highlight the importance of dance history not by defining or characterizing its boundaries but mostly by trying to recognize a series of notions around the dance history dialogue. As Carter mentions in the introduction of Rethinking Dance History , the methodologies of the study of dance history are so diverse that the claim of a historical perspective with clear boundaries becomes inadequate. She presents a series of criteria as notions that can embrace the validity of the field. “Dance has a history which is worthy of study in order to enhance knowledge and understanding of both the past and the present. Also, there are readers who are located in pedagogical contexts or ‘learning’ situations wherein, currently, there is a focus on the historical development of theater dance. Furthermore, there are researchers/writers who are adopting new approaches and developing new subject matter. And finally, there is a macro discipline of history which provides skills, methods and concepts” (Carter, 2004: 1-3).

Why bother with dance history and the past then? As Andre Lepecki suggests “the past is not that which vanishes at every second that passes, but rather that which presents itself in the present as a forceful absence, a set of references, signs, lines of forces, all traversing the body on stage, and defining the ground on where dance (all of us) stands” (Lepecki, 2004: 176). Therefore, the reconstruction of dance histories projects itself in the present through new understandings. Paradoxically, the traditional science of history is shaken through a process of debates that questioned the nature of knowledge and how the knowledge is being retrieved and generated. The postmodern thought has affected the nature of history itself and has triggered a shift on the role of the author-historian; the sources are not considered anymore as objective and real facts but as mute, and it is in the role of the historian to actively create them and articulate subjectively their voices. Cultural studies have created a subversion of the traditional thought about the hierarchy of knowledge under which the written sources are not considered anymore the privileged evidence for recreating the past (Carter, pp. 10-13). Much of what we recognize as the history of dance in the West is based on evidence such as photographs, texts of the creators, music sheets or notations and, more recently, the use of video. The paramountcy of the ‘text’ (a kind of ‘textual source’ can also be the digital image), the illusion of the objectivity of the ‘written’ or the recorded material in relation to the ephemerality of the theatrical experience are issues that are analyzed in depth by the science and philosophy of history, while recalling that the primacy of the ‘written’ over the ‘oral’ element is an ideological choice that is not legitimized scientifically but socio-culturally.

Dance notation of La Cachucha, by Friedrich Albert Zorn.

 

For the interpretation of dance by the dance historian, the fact that dance is ephemeral plays an important role; the past is all ephemeral and it exists only in records of the events. Thus, “it is the exploration of what that dancing might have ‘meant’ and how it meant different things to different people which is the interrogative and imaginative task of the historian” mentions again Carter trying to draw on attitudes towards the sources. She continues that the validity of the sources -the content, the author, the location – is in a constant dialogue between the interpreter-historian in the present and the evidence in whatever form the past has left behind. Apart from the traditional written source, a key-source is the visual (Carter, pp. 14-15).

Another subversion of the traditional history is that the purpose of history is not anymore to investigate the past in order to learn about the future and the same would argue dance historians. Following this line of inquiry, Hammergren discusses the process of dance history narratives and wonders how sources about dance history are being conceived. She concludes that “the way we choose and use source material might result in many different historical narratives” (Hammergren, 2004: p.21-22). I want to outline that it is exactly in this way the reason why bothering with dance history; historical narratives of dance are shaped and formulated by our choices and uses of these choices as dance historians. 

Looking at the source materials as a valuable methodological tool around the issue of re-enactments, arises an interesting point of importance for the dance history. Instead of looking at a re-enactment as the truthful representation of a past creation, “we may choose to conceive of the reconstruction as a translation of an origin in the sense that documents have been translated into movements, sound and stage setting. But because the origin is lost, that is, it has disappeared from repertory and the reconstruction has replaced it as another kind of ‘authentic origin’, we could perceive it as a contradiction to its original version and speak of a relationship of displacement” (Hammergren, p.24). Thus, the “same” piece presents simultaneously different but interrelated historical voices that give an essential aspect to the dialogue around the importance of dance history.

By learning to distinguish the emplotment strategies used by historians, and how it affects the dance history being told, we can begin to understand and perceive dance sources “as ambiguous because they are part of a polysemic structure of meaning making”(Hammergren, p. 30). Overall, the reasons why bothering with dance history correlate with a general knowledge of the dance heritage that give meaning and context to the dance works of today while dance history offers a significant narration about man’s past.

 

Bibliography

Adshead-Lansdale, J. (1997) The “Congealed Residues” of Dance History: A Response to Richard Ralph’s “Dance Scholarship and Academic Fashion” One Path to
a Predetermined Enlightenment?, Dance Chronicle, 20(1), pp. 63-86.

Carter, A. (2004) Making History: A General Introduction, in Carter, A. (ed.) Rethinking Dance History A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 1-9.

Carter, A. (2004) Destabilising the Discipline: Critical Debates about History and their Impact on the Study of Dance, in Carter, A. (ed.) Rethinking Dance History A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 10-19.

Hammergren, L. (2004) Many sources, Many Voices, in Carter, A. (ed.) Rethinking Dance History A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 20-31.

Lepecki, A. (2004) Concept and Presence: The Contemporary European Dance Scene, in Carter, A. (ed.) Rethinking Dance History A Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 170-180.

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